The best surf & design hotels · Biarritz & the French Basque Coast
Regina Experimental Biarritz
The Hôtel Régina was built in 1907 by architect Henry Martinet, nicknamed Le Petit Palais — a Belle Époque building with a fifteen-metre atrium, an Eiffel glass roof, and a position on the cliff above Miramar Beach that made it the meeting place for American billionaires and Spanish grandees through the Roaring Twenties. Jeanne Lanvin sketched collections in the lobby piano bar. The Experimental Group acquired it in 2022 and handed the renovation to Dorothée Meilichzon, who took the original architecture and ran postmodernist colour through it — mint, navy, oxblood, marine stripes, curved forms that evoke 1920s ocean liners. Seventy-two rooms face either the Bay of Biscay or the Golf du Phare. Le Garage, the Experimental Group's second Biarritz property, is directly next door. The surf is five minutes from the front door.
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The hotel
The Design
Belle Époque building. Postmodernist renovation by Dorothée Meilichzon. The atrium is fifteen metres high and everything faces it.
Meilichzon kept the original glass roof, the sweeping staircases, the art deco friezes, and the Eileen Gray-referenced bar counter — then introduced curved postmodern forms, Basque red accents, and ocean-liner detailing throughout the rooms. The renovation treats the building's hundred-year history as material rather than obstacle.
The Design
Belle Époque building. Postmodernist renovation by Dorothée Meilichzon. The atrium is fifteen metres high and everything faces it.
Meilichzon kept the original glass roof, the sweeping staircases, the art deco friezes, and the Eileen Gray-referenced bar counter — then introduced curved postmodern forms, Basque red accents, and ocean-liner detailing throughout the rooms. The renovation treats the building's hundred-year history as material rather than obstacle.
The Food
Frenchie Biarritz. Not a Basque restaurant — a restaurant that cooks Basque products. The distinction matters.
Chef Grégory Marchand opened Frenchie in Paris before anyone had heard of the street it was on. Frenchie Biarritz is his interpretation of the region's produce rather than its traditions — local squid, Basque pork, seasonal fish, handled with the precision of someone who cooks the ingredient rather than the cuisine. The terrace faces the ocean.
The Food
Frenchie Biarritz. Not a Basque restaurant — a restaurant that cooks Basque products. The distinction matters.
Chef Grégory Marchand opened Frenchie in Paris before anyone had heard of the street it was on. Frenchie Biarritz is his interpretation of the region's produce rather than its traditions — local squid, Basque pork, seasonal fish, handled with the precision of someone who cooks the ingredient rather than the cuisine. The terrace faces the ocean.
